Wow.

I did not see this coming. (No really, I did not see this coming.)

The shamelessness of this couple continues to astound me.

Sneed hears rumbles former President Bill Clinton, who lied about his affair with White House intern Monica “That Woman” Lewinsky, may opt to publicly apologize for the abuse Lewinsky claims she’s endured since the sex scandal broke more than 15 years ago.

◆ The rationale? To fend off critics of his wife Hillary who blame her for protecting a powerful husband who is a sexual predator. Hillary Clinton is eyeing a 2016 presidential bid.

Of course. As if you had to explain that. Of course this can only be about political positioning.

From Althouse, filling in at Instapundit.

Posted by: Ace at 03:09 PM | Comments (310)
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I think Hirsi Ali's sin was taking her activism beyond the "Hashtag" stage.

Since the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria last month, the meaning of Boko Haram—the name used by the terrorist group that seized the girls—has become more widely known. The translation from the Hausa language is usually given in English-language media as "Western Education Is Forbidden," though "Non-Muslim Teaching Is Forbidden" might be more accurate.

But little attention has been paid to the group's formal Arabic name: Jam'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-da'wa wal-Jihad. That roughly translates as "The Fellowship of the People of the Tradition for Preaching and Holy War." That's a lot less catchy than Boko Haram but significantly more revealing about the group and its mission. Far from being an aberration among Islamist terror groups, as some observers suggest, Boko Haram in its goals and methods is in fact all too representative.

The kidnapping of the schoolgirls throws into bold relief a central part of what the jihadists are about: the oppression of women. Boko Haram sincerely believes that girls are better off enslaved than educated. The terrorists' mission is no different from that of the Taliban assassin who shot and nearly killed 15-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai—as she rode a school bus home in 2012—because she advocated girls' education. As I know from experience, nothing is more anathema to the jihadists than equal and educated women.

How to explain this phenomenon to baffled Westerners, who these days seem more eager to smear the critics of jihadism as "Islamophobes" than to stand up for women's most basic rights? Where are the Muslim college-student organizations denouncing Boko Haram? Where is the outrage during Friday prayers? These girls' lives deserve more than a Twitter hashtag protest.

...

It is... time for Western liberals to wake up. If they choose to regard Boko Haram as an aberration, they do so at their peril. The kidnapping of these schoolgirls is not an isolated tragedy; their fate reflects a new wave of jihadism that extends far beyond Nigeria and poses a mortal threat to the rights of women and girls. If my pointing this out offends some people more than the odious acts of Boko Haram, then so be it.

It's an interesting dynamic.

I think the problem can be summed up pretty simply: Progressives would like to believe that the war going on in the world is between Extremist Muslims and, get this, Extremist Christians. That it has nothing to do with Progressives, who are The Only Sane Men in the Room, standing back, laughing at the religious sillyheads as they war with each other.

No matter how many times Islamists vow that they hate "Progressives" more than the godly, if kaffir, Christians, and then match deed to vow, "Progressives" continue spinning themselves this childish fantasy. They'll rouse themselves to notice some awful massacre committed by the Islamist lunatics for a week, and, if really roused, will even retweet a Hashtag Uprising against it; and then the next week, they go back to "condemning both sides," and pretending to be a virtuous Switzerland.

In fact they're cowards and in their cowardice, accomplices to murderers.

Hashtag Activism

For moral preening without all the exertion and bother of moral action.

Posted by: Ace at 02:06 PM | Comments (209)
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NBC had kept the show on the air despite persistent low ratings because its fan base was intensely, nerdishly loyal -- enough to fill Hall H at Comic-Con (which I guess is a big hall, and thus a big deal).

It also helped that Community was one of those shows that no one watched, but a lot of people wrote about. There are, conversely, shows that a great many people watch, but no one writes about, such as NCIS.

NBC kept the show on the air, sort of, sometimes airing it in the winter or spring, and usually putting it up against the hugest show on TV, The Big Bang Theory, which is also, of course, a comedy. (Why they didn't put it up against, say, CSI, to benefit from some counter-programming placement, I don't know.)

In any event, after five seasons, most of which were abbreviated (only 13 or so shows being ordered instead of a more typical 22), they've finally pulled the plug.

I speculated a while ago that if Arrested Development had been on, now, rather than back in 2003, it never would have gone out of production. Fox would have cancelled it, sure, but Netflix, or Amazon, or even Hulu would have begun producing the show.

Community is that type of show, with a loyal (if small) fan base, so we'll see if my speculation has any merit to it.

In other TV news, Fox will begin airing Gotham, a show set in Batman's Gotham City, but Before Batman. The show will follow young-ish cop Jim Gordon and also a 12 year old Bruce Wayne. (Trailer below the fold.)

The creator, who also created Rome and The Mentalist, sings the praises of his own show:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: My assumption has been that the reason this TV show can be done — rights-wise — is because Batman himself is not in it. That way, it doesn’t overlap with any films. Is that correct?

BRUNO HELLER: Certainly from Warner Bros. and DC’s business point of view, that’s why it can be done. For me, if they said, “Do Batman,” I would have said, “No.” I would have not been interested at all. I don’t think Batman works very well on TV — to have people behind masks. Frankly, all those superhero stories I’ve seen, I always love them until they get into the costume. And then it’s, “Oh, okay, they’ve ascended, they’ve stopped becoming humans.” It’s their apotheosis. They go to heaven and they’re Superman. There have been so many great versions of it. This is a version of something else entirely.

...

I’ve been talking to Geoff Johns at DC for a few years about wanting to do something in the DC canon. I came in to pitch the idea that we’re doing, essentially, and they came to pitch me the same thing. The nut of the idea was: What if young James Gordon was the detective who investigated the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents? And once you make that connection, it opened up a whole world of storytelling that we realized hadn’t really been looked at before, which is the world before Batman — the world of Gotham, young Bruce Wayne, and young James Gordon and the origin stories of the villains.

ABC has renewed Agents of SHIELD despite so-so ratings, but then, the network has reasons besides ratings to keep the show on the dial, as it helps promote all of its parent company's Avengers-related movies.

Incidentally, while Agents of SHIELD began as sub-mediocre show, it got more interesting at season's end, when the HYDRA conspiracy within SHIELD revealed itself, timed, almost to the minute, with the same event happening in the Captain America movie. This is a geek triumph: Comic book continuity applied to comic book tv shows and movies.

Oh, and if you were a fan of "Peggy Carter" in the first Captain America film, and/or found Haley Atwell to be beyond hot, you might be happy to know ABC has now also picked up Agent Carter, about the character's work as a secret agent (alongside Howard Stark) in 1946.

Meanwhile, Marvel is filming not one but four new superhero series for Netfilx: Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, and Daredevil.

I think the idea is that they'll also do a mini-series called The Defenders in which these characters team-up, like B-Team Avengers.

By the way I really have no idea who "Jessica Jones" is but spoiler alert she ultimately marries Luke Cage.

Oh, and of course The Flash is coming up on CW. (Video of his origin, which was already shown on the Green Arrow companion series, below.)

I really think this market is oversaturated, or, given the genre, super-saturated. I like superhero stuff, and yet I personally think this is all excessive.

I mean, this is ridiculous. Secondary players (Jim Gordon, Peggy Carter) are now getting their own series.

Fall 2014 will feature three series (3!) centered around people who have merely met superheroes.

Coming soon: Jimmy Olsen, Boy Reporter.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (357)
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Of course.

They don't actually say "racist," now that I read it more carefully.

It does, however, seem strongly implied.

To the propaganda machine on the right, the Common Core—an effort driven by the states—is actually “Obamacore,” a nefarious federal plot to wrest control of education from local school systems and parents. Instead of the “death panels” of “Obamacare,” the fear is now “government indoctrination camps.”

The disinformation campaign is being driven by the likes of Fox News, the John Birch Society, Tea Party factions, and the Christian Right. National think tanks and advocacy groups associated with the Koch brothers, whose father was a founding Birch member, have taken up the cause.

By raising the specter of “Obamacore,” activists on the radical right hope to gain leverage against their real target—public education itself.

You can read the whole report, if you like, though I can't imagine why. It does acknowledge that there are "legitimate debates" over Common Core, but mostly it tosses together libertarian bloggers, fundamentalist preachers, nutjobs, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Tea Party members, the Koch brothers (obligatory disclaimer: David Koch sits on the Board of the Reason Foundation), and anybody else SPLC doesn't like who criticizes Common Core. And, yes, the John Birch Society, probably because the people on the SPLC's mailing list know who that is and find the group scary. It jogs even their memories, though, just in case: "Chief among the Patriot groups is the John Birch Society (JBS)—the ultra-right organization that once called President Dwight D. Eisenhower a communist agent."

Racism

It's anything you want it to be.

Posted by: Ace at 10:16 AM | Comments (365)
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So says this National Journal piece.

When Jay Carney was grilled at length by Jonathan Karl of ABC News over an email outlining administration talking points in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, it was not, by the reckoning of many observers, the White House press secretary's finest hour. Carney was alternately defensive and dismissive, arguably fueling a bonfire he was trying to tamp down.

But Carney needn't have worried. He had plenty of backup.

He had The New Republic's Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as "nonsense." He had Slate's David Weigel, along with The Washington Post's Plum Line blog, debunking any claim that the new email was a "smoking gun." Media Matters for America labeled Benghazi a "hoax." Salon wrote that the GOP had a "demented Benghazi disease." Daily Kos featured the headline: "Here's Why the GOP Is Fired Up About Benghazi—and Here's Why They're Wrong." The Huffington Post offered "Three Reasons Why Reviving Benghazi Is Stupid—for the GOP."

It's been a familiar pattern since President Obama took office in 2009: When critics attack, the White House can count on a posse of progressive writers to ride to its rescue. Pick an issue, from the Affordable Care Act to Ukraine to the economy to controversies involving the Internal Revenue Service and Benghazi, and you'll find the same voices again and again, on the Web and on Twitter, giving the president cover while savaging the opposition. And typically doing it with sharper tongues and tighter arguments than the White House itself.

But are they all being honest?

Backing your friends and belittling your enemies is a healthy business model, one rewarded by a torrent of clicks, retweets, "likes," and links. "The incentives are to play ball," says one former liberal blogger, "not to speak truth to power. More clicks. More action. Partisanship drives clicks."

If someone is a progressive I'd expect him to peddle a progressive ideological line most of the time, and I wouldn't consider that dishonest. Wrong, yes, but not dishonest. It does not bother me at all that Dave Weigel, for example, would think Obama is right on all ideological points.

What makes me wonder about him is when he is also effusively pro-Obama (or rather: Effusively anti-any-criticism-of-Obama) about non-ideological points, like whether or not Obama told the truth in the aftermath of Benghazi.

Whether a man has told the truth about an event is a strictly non-ideological matter. He either did, or he did not. There is no theory of politics here that would tend to push an ideologue towards answering the question one way or another.

Someone could honestly always believe in the progressive ideological line, but it's a bit hard to believe that these progressive bloggers also believes that Obama has conducted himself faultlessly as regards every non-ideological grounds.

This is where hackery and herd discipline come into play.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (311)
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Hello, old friend ...

Posted by: andy at 08:38 AM | Comments (134)
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Dave in Texas joins Ace, Gabe, Drew and me to answer some listener questions. I'd advise removing all sharp objects from your immediate reach before pressing "play".

Remember, you've been warned!

Intro/Outro: Pharrell - Happy / Katrina and the Waves - Walking On Sunshine

Questions & comments here: Ask the Blog

Listen: Stitcher | MP3 Download
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Browse (and even search!) the archives

Follow on Twitter:
AoSHQ Podcast (@AoSHQPodcast)
Ace (@AceofSpadesHQ)
Drew M. (@DrewMTips)
Gabriel Malor (@GabrielMalor)
John E. (@JohnEkdahl)
Andy (@TheH2 and @AndyM1911)

Open thread in the comments.

Posted by: andy at 12:24 PM | Comments (207)
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• Monogamy Envy
  
• The Devil Wears Obama
  
• Obama Really Cares About Those Nigerian Girls He Just Heard About
  
• On Harry Reid
  
• Bulldogs Confront Bear Who Entered Their Territory
  
• Progressive Bloggers, Like Dave Weigel, Are Doing The White House's Job
  
• No, Journalists Aren't Becoming More Moral
  
• Obama's Climate Bomb
  
• Kevin Durant And Inequality
  
• Russia Conducts Large Scale Nuclear Attack Exercise
  
• Ukrainian Jews Form Defense Force
  
• Dave In Texas Strikes Again!
  
• From The 'Only Police Should Have Guns' File
  

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:02 AM | Comments (699)
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FRIDAAAY! YAAAY!!

I got nothing for ya, except this movie trailer: more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (239)
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The 2013 Duranty Awards For Mendacious Journalism Have Been Announced

Based on the lies and dishonesty of Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent during the 1920s and 1930s who was a apologist for Soviet crimes and helped cover up the holodomor.

The Duranty Prize for 2013:

Second runner-up:  John Judis for his absurdly biased and ignorant reporting on Israel and the Middle East in general in The New Republic. Presentation speech by Ron Radosh.

First runner-up: Candy Crowley of CNN for her unprecedented personal intervention in a presidential debate she was moderating on the subject of Benghazi.  The committee realized this intervention took place 2012, but the committee noted Crowley continued to justify this unconscionably biased intervention throughout 2013.  Presentation speech by Claudia Rosett.

THE DURANTY FOR 2013: David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times for his supposedly thorough unraveling of the Benghazi affair, "A Deadly Mix in Benghazi," which was revealed almost instantly to be a meretricious piece of deception worthy of Walter Duranty himself.  Presentation speech by Roger Kimball.

Along with a new award - The Rather - for lifetime achievement in dishonest reporting.

THE RATHER:  Seymour Hersh for a lifetime of astonishingly dishonest journalism on subjects ranging from the war in Iraq to JFK and Marilyn Monroe. Presentation speech by Roger L. Simon

Quote of the Day

There are some geopolitical lessons in history that everyone ought to bear in mind, like "don't get into a land war in Asia," and "Don't invade Russia, period," and one of those ought to be, "Don't invade Ireland. You might actually conquer it and then you have to rule them, and good luck with that."

-- Hognose on the Tommy Gun's first use in combat

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:49 PM | Comments (603)
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